Nautilion League

Historical Record #

The Meridian Guild didn’t start with some grand scheme to conquer the world, it was just a bunch of captains who were sick of being pushed around. The established nations kept hitting them with heavy-handed laws and crushing taxes, making it impossible to trade fairly. So, in 4127 BR, they decided to break away. They formed a small, defiant fleet and sailed southeast, looking for a place where business wasn’t just about money, but about trust and a handshake agreement.

They found what they were looking for on the southern coast of Monsherba. It was a deep, natural bay, perfectly sheltered from any rough weather. The land itself was rich and wild: dense forests of hardwood and plenty of iron, tar, and pitch waiting to be mined. They named their first settlement Moorsmost.

The founders moved fast. While a crew stayed to start building the port, others immediately sailed off. They weren’t focused on trading yet; they were focused on recruitment. They knew their only real safety would be in sheer numbers, in building a fleet so huge it would force the world to respect them. To protect their newfound enterprise, they brought in mercenaries to form a small militia to guard their inland assets. They managed to secure almost all the local resources, but that early success quickly met a crushing reality. The powerful neighboring nation of Brynnmor heard what they were doing and seized a critical source of tar and pitch. The guild didn’t have the kind of army to fight a real war, so they had to back down and concede the land. They were forced into a costly trade agreement that bit deep into their hard-earned profits. The taste of that defeat was a bitter reminder of their weakness, one they wouldn’t soon forget.

Centuries later, that little cooperative guild of captains changed entirely. By 919 AR, it wasn’t a guild anymore; it had morphed into a huge corporation called Monsherba Mercantile. This wasn’t just a name change, it was a change in their very soul. The shared wealth had led to concentrated power, and the most successful merchants now behaved like oligarchs, ruling over the others. This era saw growth no one could have predicted. The massive wealth of Monsherba Mercantile let them build a naval fleet that dwarfed every other power, allowing them to seize control of all the major trade routes. But on land, they were still soft. Their military was still just a hodgepodge of hired soldiers, barely enough to hold their current territories. The old resentment over the Brynnmor concession fueled several expensive, failed attempts to reclaim the tar and pitch lands, each one a sharp lesson in their lack of land-based strength.

By 2,567 AR, the Monsherba Mercantile was so dominant at sea that its leaders decided to make their power official, rebranding as the Nautilion League. The name marked their evolution from a corporation into a true maritime nation that ruled the oceans. The Nautilion League’s fleet was now so massive it could impose blockades that would cripple local economies and force any contract negotiation to go their way. Moorsmost, which had started as a little harbor, had exploded into a massive global metropolis, a true crossroads of commerce and culture. While the League’s influence touched every corner of the globe, they still had to deal with the singular, annoying stubbornness of Brynnmor, a frustrating little footnote to their otherwise absolute naval dominance.